Pakistan: No respite from Terror

THE slaughter of more than 70 innocents on Easter Sunday in the “Gulshan-e-Iqbal” children's park in Lahore has once again brought to the fore the serious threat posed by terrorist outfits to the security of the Pakistani State. The attack carried out by a suicide bomber was ostensibly targeted against the minority Christians who were celebrating Easter. But more non-Christians were killed in the attack and a large number were children.

No Concern for Job and Survival of Beedi Workers

SINCE the middle of February, 2016, more than one crore beedi workers, mainly in the rural areas, have lost their meagre daily earnings due to shut down by beedi manufacturers in protest against the health ministry’s notification increasing the size of pictorial health warning on tobacco containing products including beedis. This is taking place at a time when vast rural areas in different states are reeling under draught and the rural people are deprived of their earnings from agriculture and the failure of MNREGA to provide alternative jobs in rural areas.

Model Land Leasing Act: Turning the Clock Backwards

WHEN the BJP government announced, in its latest budget, that it is determined to double farmers’ income in next seven years, the nation looked with awe. Critiques pondered over how that could happen in such a short time. The analysts scanned the budget documents to find out the allocations for agrarian infrastructure. But the government silently worked its way to create a new agrarian structure that coerces the small and marginal farmers to part with their precious piece of land and become daily wage labourers in the by-lanes of urban landscape.

Centre Of Indian Trade Unions: May Day Manifesto, 2016

ON this May Day, CITU

Greets the working class and toiling people of the entire world and our own country, India;

Expresses solidarity to the fight of the working class and people of all the continents against the exploitative international finance driven neoliberal capitalist order;

Extends solidarity to the people in socialist countries and their struggles in defence of socialism in their countries; reaffirms its confidence that imperialist conspiracies to undermine socialism and restore capitalism in these countries would be decisively defeated

7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba Concludes Successfully

THE 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, held from April 16-19, 2016 concluded successfully with the adoption of various policy documents, reviewing the work done from the 6th Congress and election of the new leadership for the Party till the next Congress.

125-ft Ambedkar Statue OK, What about Burial Grounds for Dalits?

ISSUES concerning social justice surfaced strongly during the celebrations of 125TH birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar. This emerged in response to BJP and Sangh Parivaar's ongoing efforts to reinstate predatory and obscurantist opinions and ideology, and out of the struggle against these efforts. The concrete expression of such a resistance is visible in the movements in University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi among others.

WTO: The World Can Fry, But Trade Must Rule

THE world is currently smashing temperature records one after the other, with 2016 now looking very likely to be the third year in a row as the hottest year on record since 1850. Already, we have had hardly any winter anywhere in the world including the Arctic, and smashed the March all-time high temperature record by quite a margin.

BEFI Demands Changes in SBI Recruitment Policy

THE Bank Employees Federation of India (BEFI) has written to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and State Bank of India Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya over its recruitment policy and demanded that necessary changes be made in it so as to ensure that bona fide candidates are not left out of the process.

Acute Agrarian Distress in Marathwada Region

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat joined a Kisan Sabha campaign on the issue of acute agrarian distress in the Marathwada region in Maharashtra on April 24-25. She, along with other leaders, visited 15-20 villages and met farmers and MGNREGA workers in Aurangabad, Beed and Jalna districts. She also visited cattle fairs and cattle shelters.

Thinking Together

Our Party conferences at district/state/all India level elect steering committees to conduct the schedule of conferences. Once steering committees are formed the entire organisational power is vested in them till the new committees are elected. In view of this, my questions are: if steering committee concept is so important, why it does not at all find a mention in the Party Constitution? The word "steering committee" is completely absent in the Party Constitution at least in the web version. The conference discusses the report by district committee/state committee/CC as the case may be.

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